There's been a great deal of buzz about passive candidates-those
coveted potential employees who are not actively pursuing other job
opportunities. Obviously, companies prize and pursue them because
they represent the most talented and productive segment of the
workforce. As top performers, chances are they are not looking for
other opportunities as they are comfortable, engaged, appreciated,
and justly rewarded in their current position. It is also likely
that they are not actively looking because they view the job
seeking process with dread; many carry lingering negative
experiences, whether they submitted their resume to a recruiter or
an online repository, or built one using a web-based system. They
know how time-consuming, inconvenient, fragmented, and ultimately
frustrating the process is-which is why most would just as soon opt
out and maintain the status quo. With so many incentives to stay,
and with such stubborn structural barriers-or disincentives-to
exploring other potentially more rewarding opportunities, why
leave?

Most people would make the move to a new job if it offered the
right role in the right company, along with an attractive
compensation, incentives, and benefits package. Previously, finding
and reaching passive candidates presented the greatest barrier and
challenge. Today, however, hiring managers have ample tools and
venues to find passive candidates. Once found, the challenge is to
engage them in a meaningful way-which is where the process often
breaks down. Put simply, few organizations offer passive candidates
an easy, intuitive, and smooth path that takes them through each
phase of the screening and assessment process; imagine a system
that gave candidates a real sense of the opportunity, then allowed
them to pursue it immediately, in real time, without requiring an
updated resume (which passive candidates by definition don't
have)…while hiring managers on the other end get more complete,
multi-dimensional perspectives on each candidate entering the
system. This article will elaborate on these challenges, and
outline a solution that uses advanced automation to find, engage,
and hire passive candidates.

Current Strategies

A number of Internet-based networking tools (i.e., LinkedIn,
Jigsaw) have cropped up to help streamline the process of locating
passive candidates. The process is akin to the one used in sales
where you identify leads and qualify prospects. In other words, you
are identifying and qualifying passive candidates. However, such a
process is still time-intensive and cumbersome.

One issue in today's employment landscape is that at any given
moment 20 percent of the nation's workforce has an updated resume
while the other 80 percent does not. While recruiting messages
delivered through these networking sources are reaching a wide
readership, unfortunately the call to action is to send a resume.
The 80 percent is not likely to respond to such a request. And,
perhaps most important, the 20 percent with a resume are
increasingly disillusioned with resume-centric processes. Reports
that job seekers are becoming disenchanted with the job board
experience attests to the fact that no matter how easy it is to
submit resumes, the process of guessing what should be put on paper
and often receiving no response, is a negative and unsatisfying
experience. In essence, all candidates become passive when applying
for a position via conventional solutions that are
resume-dependent. In addition, employers who are searching from
this 20 percent pool are competing with one another for a limited
number of candidates with resumes.

In other words, while resumes traditionally serve as a career
passport, they also represent a roadblock. Imagine going to a
conference to network and immediately after being introduced to
someone, he asks you for a business card. You don't have one and
the conversation abruptly ends-before it really begins-and the
other person simply walks away. Resumes are considered calling
cards and most HR professionals or hiring managers won't initiate
the recruiting process without one. So much for engaging passive
candidates. Companies need to change the paradigm and start
thinking about ways to leapfrog the resume dilemma and connect with
passive candidates.

Creative Recruiting

As mentioned, finding passive candidates is a challenge. Rather
than searching for them, perhaps it's as easy as inviting them to
meet you. As an example, one company scheduled a free seminar at
their location that focused on eldercare, a timely and important
issue for single and two-career couples. The seminar was open to
the public and publicized in the local media. The company also set
up a small table at the seminar announcing that it was looking to
hire and emphasized that no resume was required to apply. There was
an overwhelming response from seminar attendees who were provided
with an information card detailing how to access the company's
automated interview, screening, and assessment solution 24/7.

The company not only attracted passive candidates and made it
easy for them to apply, they presented themselves as an
employer-of-choice by focusing on work/life issues. Creative
recruiting tools promote a positive user experience while conveying
what makes the job and the employer so compelling. To take
creativity one step further, a Web-based solution can incorporate a
streaming video that talks about the company's culture and what it
offers employees in terms of benefits and perks. The message that
the company is progressive and dynamic is reinforced once these
"interested" passive candidates engage the screening and assessment
solution.

Breaking Your Resume Dependency

The core of any creative recruiting strategy for passive
candidates is an automated screening and assessment solution that
bypasses the need for a resume. While HR has long embraced
computerization as a means of streamlining the recruiting process
and vetting candidates, most conventional solutions are resume
dependent. As a result, they are not well suited to screen passive
candidates for a number of reasons.

First, many computerized solutions use "filtering" technology as
a screening tool. However, filters use resume key word searches and
parsing to turn up matches to the job description. From another
perspective, filtering has also proven to be inefficient and
ineffective since many qualified candidates are "screened out"
because their resumes do not contain the desired keywords.

A relatively new tool, intelligent searching, has taken parsing
software to another level-however, this methodology also has some
significant drawbacks and inherent problems. In short, intelligent
searching matches conceptual and contextual information from a
candidate's source document (i.e., a resume or application) to
another document (i.e., a requisition or job description). The
result is a list indicating which candidates present the closest
match by percentage. The primary drawback is that the results are
based on the accuracy of the candidate's source document-i.e.,
resumes, which can be subjective and prone to
misrepresentation.
Finally, some computerized solutions are simply "resume builders."
They walk candidates through a process that requires them to input
information that will construct a resume. The process can be
tedious and time-consuming-one that passive candidates are not
likely to engage in. Again, the solution is also likely to rely on
filtering or parsing to identify potential candidates.
In short, conventional screening processes are largely ineffective
because they simply weed out unqualified candidates who do not meet
basic criteria, such as education or experience, most often based
on information obtained from resumes-which most passive candidates
do not have.

How to Reach-and Engage-Passive Candidates

Conventional screening approaches effectively pose a roadblock
for passive candidates because they depend on the resume as a point
of entry. In many ways, employers are asking candidates to speak
through their resumes rather than engage them in direct questioning
in a later stage of the interview process. Candidates are often
frustrated at the prospect of having to condense all their
achievements and skills in two pages while trying to guess what
keywords to include.

Advanced technology exists that can engage passive candidates in
a two-way conversation without requiring a "career passport." The
conversation, which is facilitated by naturalistic Web and
phone-enabled technology, provides and solicits information from
candidates.

Most important, these solutions account for the passive
candidate's experience within the process. At the most basic level,
traditional candidate screening involves a review of the
candidate's application or resume, a manual prescreen, a phone
interview, a face-to-face interview, and perhaps a skills,
behavior, or personality assessment. While each stage is
interrelated, they are typically conducted separately. From a
passive candidate's perspective-indeed any candidate's
perspective-this process can be time-consuming, stressful, and
inefficient. However, it is even more challenging for passive
candidates to deal with a staggered or time-consuming screening
process since, by definition, they are doing something other than
job hunting. Any inconvenience-no matter how small-may prompt a
passive candidate to opt out of the process from frustration. Keep
in mind that passive candidates do not have the sense of urgency
that active candidates do. Finally, the non-interactive nature of
conventional screening processes and an over-reliance on resumes
provides passive candidates with little or no opportunity to
demonstrate their skills.

This new model seamlessly integrates all these critical
components in an automated process-realistic job preview,
prescreen, technical interview, behavioral interview, skills
assessments, job simulation, and, finally, auto scheduling for an
in-person final interview. Using a Web-enabled or integrated
telephone-based solution ensures that each candidate experiences a
seamless and convenient single-session process. Assessments can
also guide the "screening in" process by gleaning personality and
other relevant data. The result for the employer is a complete,
360-degree whole-person snapshot-one that assimilates a candidate's
experience, skill set, and behavioral characteristics, and provides
a solid indicator of potential performance and success within the
organization. Conversely, passive candidates can demonstrate their
skills in real-time rather than simply convey their expertise via a
resume.

Skills Assessment in Action: Susan Armstrong is
among several hundred candidates who have applied for a customer
care representative in a call center. Instead of the usual
resume/application preliminary procedure, Susan is immediately
directed to a Web page where she is whisked through a brief
interactive prescreen process. Passing that segment, she is then
moved to an assessment phase that uses integrated Web and phone
capabilities to simulate and replicate the procedures associated
with the call center position. Actual data entry screens are
replicated on Susan's browser window at which point a call comes in
and she is prompted to respond to the automated call and enter data
in the appropriate places. Susan experiences a realistic job
preview while at the same time a superior assessment is created
whereby she demonstrates her ability to think on her feet,
formulate a correct response (as compared to most current
assessments that only measure the applicant's ability to recognize
a good answer from among a list of options), speak coherently, talk
and type at the same time, probe for information, and project
enthusiasm and empathy. Conventional processes, on the other hand,
can lead to hiring decisions that are based solely on job history,
not competencies.

Similarly, engineering candidates may be presented with a number
of schematics or programming code over the Web while the automated
phone capability is simultaneously engaging them in a discussion of
how to redesign the example for greater efficiency.

No Resume, No Problem

Talent acquisition and retention is what ultimately makes
companies thrive. That's why finding true talent is so critical and
such a challenge-particularly when you consider that the majority
of talent is not on the market. Hiring managers who continue to
base the hiring process on resumes are trading in outmoded
currency; this is particularly the case with passive candidates
who, by definition, don't have up-to-the-minute resumes readily
available. And when you really think about it, the only resumes
that are really important are for the two or three finalists for a
position, as confirmatory evidence; you're much more likely to get
passive candidates to produce one after this much mutual interest
has been established.

So, how do you find, engage, and hire top talent if conventional
processes-i.e., those based on resumes and hiring processes that
often proceed in fits and starts over a period of weeks-don't work?
Various tools and venues have emerged-social and business
networking sites in particular-that can lead you to otherwise
hidden reserves of talent. The trick is in engaging the talent once
found with a seamless process: from engaging their initial interest
("This is an interesting opportunity"), to engaging their time ("I
can do this in just 10 minutes from my laptop without a resume?"),
and ultimately engaging each person in a meaningful exchange that
makes the candidate even more interested in the position-all the
while giving Human Resources and hiring managers a powerful and
efficient means of screening, and ultimately hiring, passive
candidates.

About the Author

Ron Selewach is a graduate of Cornell University's School of
Industrial and Labor Relations and has dedicated his professional
career to the advancement of the Human Resource profession. After a
concentrated career in corporate human resources, he founded Human
Resource Management Center, Inc. (HRMC) in 1984 as a full-service
consulting firm, offering outsourced HR solutions. Today, HRMC is a
pioneer in applying cutting-edge technology to talent acquisition
through its Web and phone-enabled HRMC AcclaimSM platform. For
additional information, contact Ron at 1-800-749-4960, rselewach@hrmc.com, or visit
www.hrmc.com.